That being said, if your favorite show hasn’t been renewed yet, do not fret. These renewals are pretty early, and the majority of them happen in April and May. So I wouldn’t be overly concerned or considering a letter writing campaign quite yet.

One of the most infuriating things when you’re a fan of TV is figuring out when your favorite show is coming back from the mid-season break. Luckily almost all of them have been announced.

All of the networks have announced the return dates for the majority of the shows following the wasteland that is known as the period between Thanksgiving and New Years. Some of them are wasting no time with shows returning as early as Jan. 2.

This is something I wish the networks would clean up for sure. When the season starts you at least have a pretty good idea when they will start, but with the mid-season I always feel like I need to consult an astrological chart and whip out an abacus to figure it out.

Fox has begun development on Riverdale, a new take on the Archie comics characters for a potential slot on its schedule.

Greg Berlanti – executive producer on Arrow and The Flash – is the man behind this new take on Archie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Riverdale will follow the core love triangle of Archie Andrews, Berry Cooper and Veronica Lodge. This doesn’t mean you won’t see appearances from the likes of Reggie Mantle, Jughead Jones, Kevin Keller and even Josie and the Pussycats, however.

Where things seem to go a little off the rails of what you would expect of a TV series based on America’s oldest teenager is that apparently things are not as they seem in the fictional town of Riverdale, New York. Apparently there will be “surrealistic twists” in small-town life as well as “darkness and weirdness bubbling beneath Riverdale’s wholesome facade.”

Honestly, at first blush I would have zero interest in this project, but Berlanti has earned my trust with his other projects, and the idea of an off-kilter Archie story intrigues me. Is it enough to make me tune in for multiple seasons? Highly doubtful. Add in that Berlanti is also working on Supergirl & The Things They Left Behind at CBS, and The Mysteries of Laura & Blindspot at NBC, he and his team are going to be spread pretty darn thin in the not too distant future.

We’ll see where this goes, but apparently with Gotham already airing at Fox, and Riverdale in development, the names of cities in comic books is all the rage.

Fox has finally given a go ahead to the Deadpool movie and given it a release date of February 12, 2016.

Ever since Wolverine: Origins, Ryan Reynolds has been pushing for a solo Deadpool film, but Fox just wasn’t moving forward with it. At some point this year, he and the other folks that are up for making it decided to shoot some test footage. Said test footage “leaked” out and fan reaction to it was highly positive.

Enough so that Fox finally decided to move ahead with the film based on the Merc With a Mouth that is part of the whole X-Men universe. I can promise you, this won’t be quite like any other super-hero movie out there. I’ve never been a huge fan of the character, but it may work better as a movie, and – I can’t believe I’m saying this – I do think Ryan Reynolds is the right person to play Deadpool.

DC isn’t beating around the bush any more when it comes to getting its properties on TV. Next up: Lucifer on Fox.

What if Lucifer got bored with running Hell? What if he decided to quit, move to Los Angeles and open a piano bar? Well, that’s the concept behind the Lucifer comic book series and the upcoming TV pilot based on it.

According to Variety, Fox has ordered the one-hour drama pilot from Californication creator Tom Kapinos and joins the increasing number of DC properties on TV. TNT is currently developing Titans, and this season will see Arrow joined by Flash, Gotham, Constantine and iZombie. Apparently the movies just aren’t moving fast enough for DC, so they are just going to try to take over TV.

Can Fox work with a series based around the Lord of Hell? I guess we’ll find out if this makes it past the pilot stage.

I have to say, of all the media coming out prior to the premiere of Gotham, the materials of Robin Taylor’s take on Oswald Cobblepot have me the most intrigued.

We need to remember as we enter into Gotham that we are looking at the proto forms of the characters we’ve come to know. Jim Gordon is just a detective, Bruce Wayne is just a boy and so on. Oswald Cobblepot, who will eventually become The Penguin, is one of the most overlooked back stories of the Batman universe outside of The Joker, who has always been kept purposefully vague.

Taylor seems to be taking a really interesting run at Cobblepot, and I’m probably more anxious to see how he develops than anyone else. While my favorite Rogue’s Gallery villains are Joker, Two-Face and Catwoman, their stories are well known, there’s a lot to play with when it comes to Cobblepot and it’s looking like this could be a lot of fun.

With Labor Day weekend winding down, the unofficial end of summer has arrived, and that means it’s time for our favorite shows to return to the networks.

Through out September and October all of our favorite shows, as well as all of the new ones will be making their debuts. The first couple of weeks are relatively quiet, but the week of Sept. 21 is when things kick into high gear and we will be inundated with returning shows.

I’ve assembled a handy table below for you track when everything will be premiering. So make sure you clean out your DVRs of all the stuff you have saved up and get ready for a whole lot of new content.

Fox has made a pilot commitment to a reboot of the 1980s super-hero dramedy, The Greatest American Hero.

Please… no.

The Greatest American Hero told the story of a teacher who was gifted with a super powered suit by aliens, but due to immediately losing the instruction manual he never fully understood how to use it. The series ran for three seasons for a total of 44 episodes. A lot of people remember it fondly, but I think they confuse their love of the theme song with the actual quality of the series.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller – coming off their success of rebooting 21 Jump Street – will be leading this project. Oddly enough The Greatest American Hero was the brainchild of Steven J. Cannell, who also happened to be the guy behind 21 Jump Street, so apparently Lord and Miller are now in the Cannell business. They also worked on the highly successful The Lego Movie, so they do have talent, but I just don’t know if this is a series we need to revisit.

Come on folks, we need some new entertainment, lets not just keep revisiting the same shows again and again.

The folks over at Bleeding Cool have seen the Gotham pilot, and from the screencaps they shared, it’s looking awesome.

Of the numerous comic based series coming to TV this fall, Gotham has me the most excited while also filling me with the most terror. As a long time Batman fan, every new take on the character worries me. That being said, I always go in with an open mind, and sometimes you find amazing things such as Batman: The Animated Series, or Batman Beyond. And then sometimes you find the Schumacher Batman films and you just go, “Oh no.”

Gotham is going to be a whole new look at the mythos, however. There will be no “Batman” in this story, at least not yet. This story is going to focus squarely on Det. Jim Gordon who will one day become Commissioner Gordon.

According to the Bleeding Cool folks, the show is part police drama/part comic book series, and they say they do both well. While of course they couldn’t share the episode with the world, they did take some screencaps to give us a taste of the show, and I have to say that it is looking awesome. Yes… even the pearls hitting the pavement. (Which fans will know what that means.)

One picture is definitely worth singling out.

This is a stand-up comic in Fish Mooney’s club. Apparently he’s not a very good comic, but for some reason Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) thinks he’s hilarious. For those of you have ever read Alan Moore’s truly amazing The Killing Joke, you can see where this might some day lead. I won’t say beyond that.

Fox has proven yet again that nothing is certain in the world of television, even when you’ve been granted a series order.

Hieroglyph was slated for a mid-season debut on Fox and former Fox Chairman of Entertainment Kevin Reilly had given it a straight to series order. The network had ordered one episode shot and told it to begin work on its first season.

Then Reilly left. As you can imagine, things turned.

Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim) and Anna Fricke (Being Human) were working on the breakdowns of the scripts for the season when the network took a look at them and went, “Nope!” and pulled the plug. The network chalked it up to “creative reasons,” which is more than likely code for, ‘we didn’t want to sink any more money into this idea that was approved by the former boss.’

You can check out the original teaser below, though I suspect it will be pulled off the Internet in the not too distant future.

I won’t count this as the first cancellation of the season as that just seems mean.

How do you know your show had problems? When fully completed episodes will never air.

Things looked promising for the Fox sitcom Us & Them. It had a great cast and was based on a hit British show, Gavin & Stacey. Fox picked up the show for the 2013/2014 season as a mid-season replacement, and then everything went south rapidly.

As production was wrapping on the sixth episode, Fox was unhappy with the quality of the scripts coming in and cut the episode order from 13 to six. This was quickly followed by deciding the series was dead in the water and Gavin & Stacey was effectively canceled last October without a single episode having aired. It was expected, however, that Fox would use this summer to burn off the six episodes to recoup at least some of its investment in the series.

Well, it looks like Fox really disliked the show because now it appears the episodes will never see the light of day.

A network source speaking with TV Line says that the six episodes have been shelved and will never air on the network. There is a chance – a slim one at best – that they could end up somewhere else, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for that to happen.

Us & Them may end up going down in the history books as one of those forgotten series such as all of those unaired pilots that never surface. I am willing to bet, though, that someday, somewhere these episodes will surface on a cable channel in some late night slot as a series that time forgot.

What does this teach us? Just because your series makes it out of pilot season, it doesn’t mean that you have cleared the last hurdle to making it to air.

Could Marvel be so annoyed with Fox holding onto the rights of the Fantastic Four films as to suspend publishing the comics?

A report surfaced recently from Bleeding Cool that Marvel will be suspending the Fantastic Four and Ultimate Fantastic Four comic books for an unknown amount of time so as not to help promote Fox’s upcoming reboot of the film franchise. The evidence has been amassing for some time now that something was in the works as artwork celebrating Marvel’s upcoming 75th anniversary does not include any member of the team, one which is considered to have founded the modern day version of Marvel. The report goes on to state that the characters can appear in other books, but they may not be the focus of the story.

Additionally, artists working on an upcoming set of trading cards for the 75th anniversary were also recently sent a letter telling them to avoid any use of the Fantastic Four and certain other characters related to the franchise.

All of this stems from when Marvel sold the film rights to the Fantastic Four to Fox during its bankruptcy in the 1990s. The deal was less than favorable to the comic publisher and says that the studio may keep the rights for as long as it continues to produce new material based on it.

While Marvel would like to bring all of its characters home – Spider-Man is at Sony and the X-Men are at Fox – the lack of the Fantastic Four has been the most problematic as it ties up major Marvel villains as well such as Dr. Doom, Galactus and the Skrull alien race. Additionally, with three studios producing films based on Marvel characters, it runs the risk of burning out the audience that much faster from too many films on the screens.

It is highly doubtful Marvel’s tactic will have much of an impact, on the success of a new Fantastic Four film, and in the end it really only seems as though it would only really do harm to long term fans of the franchise.

Marvel has had no comment on the matter, but if true, it seems the comic publisher is ready to do whatever it takes to bring its characters home.